For Photographers – Search Engine Rankings

***DISCLAIMER***The first thing I want to say is that I am under no illusion that people read my blog, let alone other photographers. I in no way think that the way I do things is the correct way and I am not writing these posts to tell people how to shoot or how to run their businesses. I am however going to be writing about my experiences; my failures, my successes, etc. If these posts help anyone, great! If not; no big deal.***DISCLAIMER***

How do you rank on Google?

Right off the bat I want to come out and say that I am no expert when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) nor do I actually put that much work in to it when it comes to my website and blog. But I wanted to share with you just where I rank and what I have done to achieve it.

So as you can see I rank nicely for the Virginia searches (page #1), but not so well on the Washington DC searches. Which kind of makes sense and is OK by me because I aim most of my SEO info at Virginia and most of my work is in Virginia too.

Take a look at these screenshots for confirmation of the ‘Virginia Wedding Photographer‘ and ‘Virginia Wedding Photography‘ listings…

And again, to be honest with you; most of my wedding work comes from referrals. Referrals from past brides, wedding planners and wedding venues. I also get some nice inquiries from United With Love and other wedding blogs who have published my work. I get very few inquiries from search engines like Google but it doesn’t hurt to have yourself be present in these type of search results. Because I do get some inquiries and bookings from Google every year.

Now. As well as not being an SEO expert; I am not a website or blog coding expert. The only SEO work I have done on my website and blog are what has been given to me through the website and blog portals.

For example. My website is from a company called Livebooks. When you buy a site from them you get a very powerful edit suite that allows you to make changes to the site yourself without constantly having to go through a designer/developer.

This is what the edit suite looks like for the SEO information.

The above shot shows the SEO information I have entered for the FLASH based portion of my website (my website has an HTML backdoor so I don’t have to worry about FLASH being non-search engine friendly). I just enter the terms I want to be present when people search for me in the Title, Description and Keywords sections.

And for my blog it is pretty similar. I use a free SEO plugin for my blog called; All In One SEO. Just search for ‘All In One SEO’ in the plugins sections on your wordpress blog and you’ll find it. Again, similar to how the website works; I just fill in the Title, Description and Keywords section with term I believe will help get the people to my work and that’s it.